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Article
Publication date: 12 June 2020

Anthony McMullan and Stephen Dann

This paper aims to present a new model of marketing analysis that is capable of using the embedded knowledge that sits untapped in the history of marketing thought to solve…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to present a new model of marketing analysis that is capable of using the embedded knowledge that sits untapped in the history of marketing thought to solve contemporary marketing problems – the conceptual-historical analytical research model (CHARM).

Design/methodology/approach

This paper outlines the evolution of historical analysis methods (HAM), along with critiques and enhancements of the prior processes offered by Savitt (1980), Nevett (1991) and Golder (2000). From these foundations, the paper outlines the components of the model of historical analysis, detailing the development of the analytical template design. It also details the four-step process of engaging structured revisits of past knowledge for contemporary problem-solving.

Findings

The CHARM for problem-solving in marketing is a knowledge-gathering system that informs marketing decisions addressing contemporary problems. This is achieved through the use of embedded knowledge from a corpus of historical texts.

Research limitations/implications

This paper provides a method for future researchers to apply for replicable examination of historical texts and to assist intercoder reliability for multi-author history projects through the application of structured templates.

Practical implications

The CHARM for problem-solving in marketing is a knowledge-gathering system that informs marketing decisions addressing contemporary problems. This is achieved through the use of embedded knowledge from a corpus of historical texts.

Originality/value

The CHARM process applies a systematic protocol for engaging qualitative sources for historical analysis through preset data collection templates, structured analysis frameworks and definitional understanding templates for improved replicability. This paper presents a new model of approaching historical analysis through a problem-solving lens, whereby historical sources become the foundations for the solution to a problem, rather than just the literature review that identifies the presence of gap.

Details

Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, vol. 12 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1755-750X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 January 2024

Tony Yan and Michael R. Hyman

This study examines how informal business networks achieve marketing goals in socially uncertain contexts. Drawing from multiple historical sources, Shangbangs, a type of business…

Abstract

Purpose

This study examines how informal business networks achieve marketing goals in socially uncertain contexts. Drawing from multiple historical sources, Shangbangs, a type of business network that thrived in pre-1949 China, are analyzed.

Design/methodology/approach

The Critical Historical Research Method (CHRM) undergirds a study of Shangbangs’ historicity (i.e. their socio-historically embedded multiplicity, including organizational forms, activities and connotations.

Findings

As informal regional, professional, project-based, special-product-based or mixed marketing networks, Shangbangs relied on “flexible specialization” and coupled multiple business needs to market goods and services, business organizations, specific social values and, when necessary, to debrand business rivals.

Research limitations/implications

This analysis extends theories about marketing networks by probing their subtypes, diverse marketing activities, multipronged channels and relationship building with social entities (including underground societies, business associations and guilds) in response to pre-1949 China’s market uncertainties. Substantiating an alternative approach to “flexible specialization” and marketing innovations within the pre-1949 Chinese economy shows how a parallel theoretical framework can complement western-based marketing theories.

Originality/value

This first comprehensive analysis of Shangbangs, an innovative historical Chinese marketing network outside the conventional market-corporate dichotomy, can inform theory building for marketing strategy-making and management conditioned by social contexts.

Details

Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1755-750X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 24 October 2019

Tony Yan and Michael R. Hyman

Studies on cross-culture marketing often focus on either localization or globalization strategies. Based on data from pre-communist China (1912–1949), product hybridization …

Abstract

Purpose

Studies on cross-culture marketing often focus on either localization or globalization strategies. Based on data from pre-communist China (1912–1949), product hybridization – defined as a process or strategy that generates symbols, designs, behaviors and cultural identities that blend local and global elements – emerges as a popular intermediate strategy worthy of further inquiry. After examining the mechanisms and processes underlying this strategy, a schema for classifying product hybridization strategies is developed and illustrated. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

Critical historical research method is applied to historical data and historical “traces” from pre-communist China’s corporate documents, memoirs, posters, advertisements, newspapers and secondhand sources.

Findings

Strategic interactions between domestic and foreign companies in pre-communist China fostered products and a city (Shanghai) containing Chinese and non-Chinese elements. Informed by historical traces and data from pre-communist China (1912-1949), a 2 × 2 classification schema relating company type (i.e. foreign or domestic) to values spectrum endpoint (i.e. domestic vs foreign) was formulated. This schema reflects the value of communication, negotiation and cultural (inter)penetration that accompanies cross-culture product flows.

Research limitations/implications

Cross-culture marketing strategies meant to help companies satisfy diverse marketplace interests can induce a mélange of product design elements. Because product hybridization reflects reciprocity between domestic and foreign companies that embodies multiple interests and contrasting interpretations of product meanings, researchers should examine globalization and localization synergistically.

Practical implications

Strategies adopted by domestic and foreign companies in pre-communist China (1912–1949) can help contemporary companies design effective cross-culture marketing strategies in a global marketplace infused with competing meanings and interests.

Originality/value

Examining historical strategies adopted in pre-communist China (1912–1949) can inform contemporary marketers’ intuitions. Understanding product hybridization in global marketplaces can improve marketing efficiency.

Details

Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, vol. 32 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-5855

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 November 2011

Ronald A. Fullerton

The paper's aim is to explain historical methodology in a marketing context.

1158

Abstract

Purpose

The paper's aim is to explain historical methodology in a marketing context.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper draws on the author's personal experience, being trained in the history method and using the historical method.

Findings

An awareness of time contexts and complex change is essential, so too is an appreciation of primary sources (as defined by historians). Reading the present into the past (anachronism) is to be avoided, and the interpretation and explanation of events are essential to good history.

Originality/value

The paper represents the author's own personal experience.

Details

Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, vol. 3 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1755-750X

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 8 November 2011

D.G. Brian Jones

350

Abstract

Details

Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, vol. 3 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1755-750X

Article
Publication date: 20 September 2011

Bradford T. Hudson

Brand heritage is an emerging concept within the marketing discipline, which suggests that the historical status of older companies is often explicitly linked to their brand…

4940

Abstract

Purpose

Brand heritage is an emerging concept within the marketing discipline, which suggests that the historical status of older companies is often explicitly linked to their brand identity and consumer appeal. The aim of this paper is to illustrate and validate this concept.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper provides a profile of the Cunard Line, which offers limited evidence to support prior conceptual work by other scholars. The paper uses historical research methods to illustrate the principles of brand heritage within a specific circumstance.

Findings

Heritage is central to the brand identity of Cunard and was a significant factor in the recent turnaround of the company. This paper demonstrates the nature and power of the brand heritage concept, even within a future‐oriented repositioning effort.

Research limitations/implications

Although the example of Cunard validates the brand heritage concept in a specific instance, it does not offer evidence that brand heritage is a universal phenomenon.

Practical implications

Brand heritage should be included within the repertoires of marketing strategists and brand managers. Executives of older companies should be aware of this approach and should consider the potential to exploit heritage for competitive advantage.

Originality/value

This paper offers original research to support prior conceptual scholarship on the emerging topic of brand heritage.

Details

European Journal of Marketing, vol. 45 no. 9/10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0566

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 25 June 2012

Andrea Ordanini and A. Parasuraman

Purpose – The paper develops a conceptual framework for assessing value-creating service ecosystems that contains four core dimensions: medium, meaning, usage, and network. Its…

Abstract

Purpose – The paper develops a conceptual framework for assessing value-creating service ecosystems that contains four core dimensions: medium, meaning, usage, and network. Its purpose is to identify and discuss the implications of the changes that occur in these dimensions when exchanges within the ecosystem that have long been mediated by physical products become direct instead.

Methodology/approach – The analysis employs the historical method and is based on a systematic investigation of the evolution of the recorded-music market during the past 150 years.

Findings – The analysis shows that the key dimensions of the recorded-music-service ecosystem evolved only gradually and incrementally during the era of physical formats that were dominant until the mid-1990s. With the advent of “liquid” music, the elements of the service ecosystem changed dramatically, leading to instability and redefining roles and exchange mechanisms in the ecosystem.

Research limitations/implications – The investigation focuses on a single ecosystem (music), and conclusions stemming from it are subject to the assumptions inherent in the historical method. Nevertheless, the paper contributes to knowledge in the Service-Dominant Logic (S-D logic) domain by offering a robust framework and a set of core dimensions that are useful for systematically analyzing the nature and consequences of changes that occur in rapidly evolving service ecosystems.

Practical implications – Apart from direct implications for the music market, the proposed framework can help managers working in other ecosystems to adopt a macro perspective in addressing value-creation issues and to pay particular attention to the underlying dynamics that influence value creation in those ecosystems.

Originality/value of paper – The development of a conceptual framework that adopts a macro-level, market-wide perspective for understanding value creation in service ecosystems is a distinct contribution of the paper, as is the application of the historical method in analyzing such an ecosystem.

Details

Special Issue – Toward a Better Understanding of the Role of Value in Markets and Marketing
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-913-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 16 April 2012

Arch G. Woodside, Hugh M. Pattinson and David B. Montgomery

This chapter documents the contributions in the business-to-business (B2B) marketing–buying literature that focus on implemented strategies in specific contexts. Research on…

Abstract

This chapter documents the contributions in the business-to-business (B2B) marketing–buying literature that focus on implemented strategies in specific contexts. Research on implemented strategies often includes thick descriptions of how things actually get done over a period of weeks, months, or years including how decision makers make sense of situations, go about processing information, make choices, interact with other decision makers, participate in specific actions, and interpret events and outcomes. Research on implemented strategies favors “direct research” (Mintzberg, 1979) that includes multiple face-to-face interviews of the same and different participants in B2B processes over the course of days, week, months, or years. Direct research is inherently inductive theory-building and case-based data driven in its theory-empirical approach. Direct research includes applying a number of possible research methods and results in a number of advances in B2B implemented-strategy-in-context theory.

Details

Business-to-Business Marketing Management: Strategies, Cases, and Solutions
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-576-1

Article
Publication date: 10 October 2018

Isabelle Aimé, Fabienne Berger-Remy and Marie-Eve Laporte

The purpose of this study is to perform a historical analysis of the brand management system (BMS) to understand why and how, over the past century, the BMS has become the…

1445

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to perform a historical analysis of the brand management system (BMS) to understand why and how, over the past century, the BMS has become the dominant marketing organizational model across Western countries and sectors and what the lessons can be learned from history to enlighten its current changes in today’s digitized environment.

Design/methodology/approach

Building on Low and Fullerton’s work (1994), the paper traces the evolution of the BMS from its creation in the 1930s to the recent digital era. Data from various sources – research papers, historical business books, case studies, newspaper articles and internal documents – are analyzed to inform an intellectual historical analysis of the BMS’s development.

Findings

The paper uses the prism of institutional isomorphism to highlight four distinct periods that show that the BMS has gradually imposed itself on the Western world and managed to adapt to an ever-changing environment. Moreover, it shows that in the current digital age, the BMS is now torn between two opposing directions: the brand manager should act as both absolute expert and galvanic facilitator and the BMS needs to reinvent itself once again.

Originality/value

This paper provides a broad perspective on the BMS function to help marketing scholars, historians and practitioners gain a better understanding of the issues currently facing the BMS and its relevance in the digital age.

Details

Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, vol. 10 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1755-750X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 November 2021

Tony Yan and Michael R. Hyman

The rich primary and secondary data sources for studying historical Chinese marketing theory and practice are discussed. This paper aims to briefly address possible challenges…

Abstract

Purpose

The rich primary and secondary data sources for studying historical Chinese marketing theory and practice are discussed. This paper aims to briefly address possible challenges (and their solutions) to using these sources.

Design/methodology/approach

A bibliographic review is used to analyze historical sources pertaining to Chinese marketing theory and practice.

Findings

Marketing scholars can draw from multiple but neglected and underused Chinese sources to glean important historical data reflecting pre-1949 Chinese marketing.

Research limitations/implications

Underused Chinese multilateral historical marketing materials are inalienable to extending historical marketing study. Many studies about marketing theory and practice are amenable to such materials.

Practical implications

By scrutinizing these materials, contemporary marketers can formulate parallel strategies from the repertoire of historical marketing strategies.

Originality/value

This is the first comprehensive survey of an invaluable non-Western source for historical research in marketing.

Details

Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, vol. 14 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1755-750X

Keywords

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